Zhu Weizheng : A giant in the ideological circles of the late Qing Dynasty, Huang Zongxi

One

Huang Zongxi undoubtedly belongs to one of the giants in the history of Qing Studies. Compared with the academic giants of his contemporaries, his knowledge was more profound than Gu Yanwu's; the depth of his thought exceeded that of Wang Fuzhi. However, he was a controversial figure after his death. The origin of the controversy lies in his academic orientation, which pays more attention to the cultural traditions of his time rationally than Gu Wang, and in this regard strives to make the past and the present connected.

We all know the social upheavals that took place in China in the 17th century. After years of bitter struggle, the rebellious starving people finally captured the capital and pronounced the death penalty of the Ming Empire, but their foothold was not stable, and they were driven out of Beijing by a small ethnic group on the northeast frontier. This people, called Manchuria, immediately unified the whole country through military conquest and began the rule of the Qing Empire. This is another repetition of the dynastic succession movement that took place many times in the Chinese Middle Ages. But first, the Ming Empire has existed for more than two and a half centuries, and people have long forgotten what the "Yi surname revolution" is about; second, the yuan and mingxing were carried out under the slogan of "expelling hu yu and restoring China", and the ming dynasty and qingxing were just the opposite in terms of results; third, when the old dynasty collapsed in the past, there must have been emperors or tyrants as the culprits, but the last monarch of the Ming Empire, The Chongzhen Emperor, was by no means a faint ruler, and the situation of the one-party dictatorship of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian was enough to make him win the praise of "wisdom". And his act of martyrdom by suicide in the end was enough to arouse the respect of the gentry.



Huang Zongxi (1610~1695), a thinker and philosopher of the Ming and Qing dynasties, was known as Mr. Lizhou.

Therefore, the pursuit of the mystery of the Ming Dynasty and the rise of the Qing Dynasty, especially the identification of the culprits that led to the demise of the Ming Empire, became a common concern of scholars in the early Qing Dynasty.

Take Gu, Huang and Wang as examples. Their choices of perspectives are very different, and their specific insights are not consistent. However, there is one point that is similar in conclusion, that is, it is believed that the ming dynasty died and the Qing dynasty, and the disaster began with the empty words and misleading countries at the end of the late Ming Dynasty. Wang Fuzhi's attitude was the most intense, completely rejecting Lu Wangxinxue, declaring that it was purely "arrogant and harmful" empty talk, the so-called Lu Jiuyuan came out and Song died, and Wang Shouren came out and died. Therefore, he also hated Cheng Zhu Lixue, thinking that only Zhang Zai represented the doctrine of truth that could be used as a "capital for seeking cure by practice". Gu Yanwu also denied Wang Xue, repeatedly denouncing Wang Shouren's faction for only talking emptyly, which was worse than Wei Jinqing's talk, and the so-called "empty words of seeing nature with a clear mind, cultivating the practical study of self-governance on behalf of others", the greatest evil lies in "confusing the masses". However, he did not completely deny Lu Xue, and thought that Cheng Zhu Lixue could be preserved and transformed, the so-called "ShujingXue without Science".

Huang Zongxi also hated Wang Xue's empty talk, especially li zhen of the so-called Wang Men leftist faction, and even denied that Li Zhen belonged to Wang Scholars, which was consistent with Gu and Wang. At that time, Wang Fuzhi was hiding in the Yao Cave in the deep mountains of Hunan Province, and it was not clear whether he had any contact with Huang Zongxi. However, Huang Zongxi was aware of Gu Yanwu's opinion, so in the eighth year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty (1669), when Gu completed the first edition of the Rizhilu, he began to write the "Ming Confucian Study Case" and re-summarize the "History of Wang Xue", which cannot be said to be purely coincidental in time, but can be seen as a response to Gu Yanwu and Lü Liuliang and Zhang Luxiang, who used theory to negate Wang Xue. In contrast, he adopted a historical attitude toward Wang Xue, believing that the previous generation of scholars, although they had different depths and differences in doctrine, "must all do their best, do their best to make a difference, and then become a family", so he believes that Wang Xue's emptiness can be remedied, and the way is to make it become a "classic" study again through the exhaustion of reading history. Of course, this is related to his teacher's inheritance, but it cannot be blamed on this as a defender of Wang Xue. In fact, his emphasis on self-sufficiency in governing learning means that his doctrine is not in tune with his teacher Liu Zongzhou. However, Huang Zongxi's orientation of "supplementing The Stage" of Wang Xue was related to his attitude towards the Opening of the Ming History Museum by the Qing court later, which was related to his earlier writing of the "Ming Yi To Be Visited" and his later treatment of the Qing court's opening of the "History of Ming", which was very easy to attract criticism and controversy.

The historical influence of "Ming Yi to be Visited" will be revealed later. The book was written in the first year (1662) or second year (1663) of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, the Kangxi Emperor was still a young child, eight years away from the pro-government, so if he compared this little emperor to the King of Zhou Wu, it would not make sense. However, he stripped away a name from the Zhou Yi and crowned it at the beginning of the book, and this gua is said to have been composed by The Old Leader of the Sheng Dynasty at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, And then marked with the word "to be visited", the subjective intention is not to think of itself as a contemporary Jizi, or to "ask under the prisoners" as criticized by Zhang Taiyan at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Later, the Kangxi Emperor was pro-government, and after the "martial arts", he followed the revision of "Wenzhi", Kaiteke, and the revision of the "History of Ming", focusing on the cooperation between Han celebrities and scholars and the imperial government. At this time, Huang Zongxi also adopted a peculiar countermeasure, that is, he refused to be recruited by the Qing court, but sent his son Huang Baijia and his protégé Wan Sitong to "participate in the History Bureau with cloth", and also set the regulations of the "History of Ming" by hand, handed them over to Wan Sitong to put into practice, and through Huang Baijia made himself the chief adviser of the History Bureau. This shows that he not only wanted to preserve the honor of the deceased Ming relics, but also influenced the compilation of the History of the Ming Dynasty. According to the value scale of the late Middle Ages, his intentions can obviously be classified as a hypocrite. Lü Liuliang, who had been his friend, and Zhang Taiyan, who particularly praised Lü Liuliang's integrity at the end of the Qing Dynasty, criticized his character by doubt, which was undoubtedly a reason.

The first draft of the History of Ming, compiled by Vance Tong, was finally defeated. According to Mr. Chen Shoushi's research, this manuscript was plagiarized by Wang Hongxu. That's another question. The "Ming Yi To Be Visited" also did not attract the attention of the Manchurian monarchs and nobles, and in the late Qianlong Dynasty, nearly a hundred years after his death, it was even banned by the Qing court. The full manuscript of the Ming Confucianism Case was first published sixty-four years after his death, but by then Wang Xue had become a resounding scholar in academia, waiting for a century and a half before "exporting to domestic sales." At the beginning of the 19th century, Jiang Fan wrote the "Records of the Sinology Masters of the State Dynasty", which listed him and Gu Yanwu together, indicating that the Qianjia sinologists recognized the two as their pioneers, but valued their "classics". Incidentally, although Liu Shipei had pointed out at the end of the Qing Dynasty that Huang Zongxi's direct influence on the "Qing Confucian" study of Shangshu and Zhou Yi, it rarely attracted the attention of researchers of Qing history.

In short, from the perspective of the history of writings, Huang Zongxi's works are equal, but in the two hundred years after his death in 1695, the actual impact is not compelling. Since Kangxi's later years, Zhu Xi was specially commended, and Wang Xue became a heretic of the ruling doctrine. Since Qianlong used the revision of the Siku Quanshu as a means of prohibiting heresy and by conniving at sinologists to oppose theories in order to achieve the despicable goal of splitting the Han scholars, Huang Zongxi's works that contain the ideal of social transformation in historical research have been even less popular. He was far less valued in the academic circles of the middle of the Qing Dynasty than Gu Yanwu. After the defeat of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Xiang warlord clique with Zeng Guofan as the core controlled the power of the southern provinces, and out of the need for the Wenju group to rely on war, the remains of Wang Fu, who had been buried for more than a hundred years, suddenly appeared one after another. Naturally, the result was a big surprise to Zeng Guofan and the like, and these relics were actually used by the revolutionary theorists in the late Qing Dynasty as a historical basis for propagating "nationalism." However, in the late Qing Dynasty, Huang Zongxi's doctrine, for a long time, did not have the same influence as Wang Fuzhi, which is also a fact.

Two

Huang Zongxi never expected that his "Ming Yi To Be Visited", two centuries after his death, would actually become a classic that instigated anti-monarchy.

More than ten years ago, in the article "Yangmingxue in Modern China", I examined the historical process of the revival of The Study of The Ming Dynasty in China in the late Qing Dynasty. Humble Wen once pointed out that in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, "although the Ming Confucian Case, which can be called 'Wang Xueshi', was engraved intermittently, after the advent of the Huiji Mojin engraving in the first year of Daoguang (1821), it was out of print for sixty years, which shows how rare the inquirers are." Humble Wen also pointed out that the first person in modern China who deliberately "resurrected" Wang Xue was Kang Youwei.

According to my research in recent years, liang Qichao's biography of Naishi after the coup d'état, the famous "Biography of Kang Nanhai", has many errors in the narrative of Kang Youwei's early deeds, one of which is that Kang Youwei's teacher Zhu Ciqi lectured on science, with Cheng Zhu as the main teacher, and also as the king of Lu. In fact, Zhu Ciqi accused King Lu of sparing no effort, and regarded Wang Xue as the same as Qianjia Hanxue, the culprit of "attacking Zhuzi". Therefore, according to this, Humble Wen judged that Kang Youwei was the special king of Lu, which was due to the master's sayings and had corrections, and it also needed to be corrected, but this historical fact also highlighted that Kang Youwei did initiate the "resurrection" of Wang Xue in the late Qing Dynasty.

Curiously, Kang Youwei's treatise never mentions Huang Zongxi's Ming Yi To Be Visited. Liang Qichao discussed the history of Qing studies after the "May Fourth" and once recalled that he and Tan Si, on the eve of the Penghu Reformation, had printed tens of thousands of copies of the "Ming Yi To Be Visited" and distributed them to others, "in the sudden change of thought in the late Qing Dynasty, it was extremely powerful." In the early 1980s, our school's annotation "Liang Qichao on the History of Qing Studies ii", in order to verify the credibility of this theory, had looked for clues about this journal in many ways, but could only use a brief note to admit that he had found nothing. Thanks to Professor Kazuko Ono, she saw this brief note, searched tirelessly in Dongying, and found an excerpted edition of the Ming Yi To Be Visited in the late Qing Dynasty, but the publisher was not Liang Qichao, but Sun Yat-sen or his allies.

Professor Cheng Ono sent her a study of this precious historical masterpiece, but after reading it, I unexpectedly got a corroborating evidence that confirmed my humble opinion. From the treatises on academic history in the first decade of this century, it can be seen that the new scholars of that period had very different estimates of Huang Zongxi. Such differences of opinion appear in the writings of Zhang Taiyan and his friends who talk about "national essence", which is particularly confusing. I have always believed that the divergence arises not only in different historical views, but also in different political views, and that the background is that Sun Yat-sen and Zhang Taiyan have different views on the system of the future republic. But I did not know that Sun Yat-sen himself had such a high opinion of the "Ming Yi To Be Visited", and after reading Professor Ono's masterpiece, I suddenly felt that my previous judgment was confirmed.

Three

In the late 19th century, Wang Xue's "resurrection" in China was inspired by some precedent in the history of the Meiji Restoration in Japan, but there were also internal factors in The Chinese intellectual circles.

Throughout the 19th century, there was a trend of thought in China that demanded the reform of the imperial system, in the words of Gong Zizhen, that is, "self-reform", and the "Reform of the Law" movement that emerged after the Sino-Japanese War characterized its climax. It is mainly the Southern Scholar doctor who has fueled this trend of thought, which I once referred to as a "gentleman's dream". The August coup d'état "fulfilled" this century-long dream. Kang Youwei fled overseas to continue his old dream, but more of the younger generation of reformists joined the ranks of calling for "full revolutions." Although later history proved that their vision of "the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the improvement of everything" was still a spring dream, before the Xinhai Revolution, it was the spiritual pillar that inspired them to fight for the establishment of the Republic of China.

History shows that in the first decade of the 20th century, for China's future system, whether to choose "constitutional monarchy" or "democratic republic", the old and new factions that debated each other endlessly, both starting from the denial of the current imperial system of monarchy and dictatorship, and the destination of the demand was to establish a political system in China that was common in the West, and the difference was mainly whether the Manchu Qing Empire was still salvageable. Judging from political ideals, both sides belong to the so-called Westernization theorists, but they must prove themselves to be the true inheritors of the long-standing historical tradition in front of the Chinese people who are good at talking about "taking history as a mirror."

However, since ancient times, China has never had a "virtual monarchy and republic", and in the Middle Ages, there is only a precedent for monarchs to become more and more concentrated on themselves, that is, the spiritual resources of "democracy" are extremely poor. As Tan Sitong said, "All laws are only the heart." In this regard, Wang Xueqian provided ideological resources. The so-called "people have the same heart, the same heart", "everyone can be Yao Shun", and even the "Six Classics Note Me" method applied by Lu Jiuyuan earlier, etc., of course provide enlightenment for those reformists. Liang Qichao said that Kang Youwei was the only good King of Lu, and the reason was that he thought that his learning was "lively and useful".

The problem is that neither the Ming Confucianism Case nor the Song Yuanxue Case provide examples comparable to the nearby Western doctrine of the separation of powers. At present, we are not sure who first discovered that the "Ming Yi to Be Visited" had such a wonderful use in the late Qing Dynasty. The Renxue once admired Huang Zongxi's book, but it seemed to have a hidden pain in focusing only on the "time of the monarch", and did not compare it with Western doctrine. Liang Qichao only occasionally quoted the "Ming Confucianism Case" before and after the Peng Shu Reform Law, which seems to be less important than Tan Sitong's "Ming Yi To Be Visited". By the beginning of the 20th century, Huang Zongxi's work was greatly valued, and it was also attributed to Zhang Taiyan.

Zhang Taiyan's first engraving of the Book of Lou, completed in 1900, contains an article entitled "The Deed of Meditation", saying that Huang Zongxi advocated the official world and denied the supremacy of the monarch, as evidenced by the modern "great powers of the five continents, or the establishment of democracy, or constitutional government": "The Huang clan originated two hundred years ago, and the credit was two hundred years later, Saint Fu! He revised the revised edition of the Book of Lou in the spring of 1903, and this article was also greatly revised, but the conclusion remained unchanged. This is the first time I have seen a work on the Ming Yi To Be Visited from the perspective of world political trends, although it does not mention the title.

Since then, there have been more and more treatises advocating Huang Zongxi and the "Ming yi to be visited", such as the "Political Art Bulletin" sponsored by Deng Shi, which published Ma Sulun's "Biography of Mr. Huang Lizhou, a Chinese nationalist inventor" in the winter of 1903, which negated the relationship between the monarchy and the Manchu Revolution, and called Huang Zongxi one of the few forerunners who "have a complete personality and can be called regretless" in the two thousand years after the Qin Dynasty. In early 1904, the "China Vernacular Newspaper", sponsored by Lin Wei, published Liu Shipei's "TheOry of Mr. Huang Lizhou", and compared the "Ming Yi To Be Visited" with Rousseau's "Theory of the People's Covenant", expressing praise for Huang Zongxi's "five bodies thrown to the ground" and praising it. This may be the precedent for calling Huang Zongxi a Chinese Rousseau.

After the famous "Su Bao" case, Deng Shi and Huang Jie came forward to organize the establishment of the Sinology Preservation Society in Shanghai, published the "Journal of National Essence", advocated the "revival of ancient studies", aimed at simulating the precedent of Europe out of the Middle Ages, and also launched a Renaissance movement in China. This group and its publications gathered a group of well-known new-style intellectuals from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Liangguang, Anhui, and Gansu provinces at that time, and supported Zhang Taiyan, who was in prison, as the leader of the alliance. Huang Zongxi's name appeared frequently in their pens. Until 1908, the Journal of National Essence published a catalogue of Huang's posthumous works provided by Huang Zongxi's seventh grandson, and published advertisements for Huang's works.

We don't know how Sun Yat-sen could have been interested in the political ideals of The Ming Dynasty. He knows very little about Chinese history and traditional doctrines, and he is not a scholar, and most of his knowledge is eaten by his ears. Therefore, he attached great importance to Huang Zongxi's theory of "original kings" and excerpted and printed it, which was obviously related to the fact that the famous scholars who were inclined to revolution at that time generally admired this book, believing that those were the testimonies of The Chinese philosophers who had long advocated democratic politics.

Four

Do you know that just as Huang Zongxi's historical status is rising steadily, there are negative voices in the ideological circles of the late Qing Dynasty? This voice did not come from someone else, but from Zhang Taiyan.

Zhang Taiyan was imprisoned in the Shanghai Concession prison for three years after publishing "Refuting Kang Youwei's Book on Revolution" and writing a preface to Zou Rong's "Revolutionary Army", and was released from prison in July 1907, that is, he traveled east to Japan and took over the editor-in-chief of the League's organ journal Minbao.

In November of the same year, he published a short article in the Minbao, entitled "Heng Sanlao", comparing the festivals of the three late Ming widows of the Huang King in the early Qing Dynasty, saying that Huang Zongxi was the worst: "Huang Taichong" was named "Ming Yi to be visited", "Although Chen Yi is high, he will ask under the prisoners."

At a time when the "platoon revolution" was on the rise, and the author himself was an idol figure who suffered for the revolution, it was of course not insignificant to make such a harsh judgment on Huang Zongxi and his "Ming Yi To Be Visited." That influence, which was greatly reduced by the "Journal of National Essence" mentioning Huang Zongxi later, was greatly reduced, and it can be inferred that he was the founder of eastern Zhejiang historiography.

Wasn't Zhang Taiyan the first to praise the author of the "Ming Yi To Be Visited" as a "saint"? However, I have revised my handwriting from the author of the reprinted edition of the existing Book of Lou, and I have found that the word "Holy Husband" in the "Deed of Meditation" has been circled in thick ink, and the side note "He who has a former knowledge" has changed from affirmation to doubt. According to my research, Zhang Taiyan revised the "Book of Lou" and renamed it "Examination", which began in 1910 and was finalized in the spring of 1915. Although the time of this revision is difficult to determine, I think it may be 1910, and the evidence is that Zhang Taiyan published "Non-Yellow" in Xuelin in this year.

As the name suggests, "non-yellow" is to deny Huang Zongxi. In this article, Zhang Taiyan not only criticized Huang Zongxi's learning far inferior to Gu Yanwu's, and his integrity was not as good as Wang Fuzhi's, but also accused the "Ming Confucianism Case" of grandstanding, but the denial focused on the "speech and government" of the "Ming Yi To Be Visited".

The whole text focuses on criticizing Huang Zongxi's "law discussion", which contradicts itself, deviating from the tradition of China's rule of law advocating since Xun Quan and Han Fei, and also contradicting Western political theory. But in the final analysis, "Zong Xi's words, the art of the Far West, are called Ren Fa, suitable for people to confuse their steps, which is enough to deceive fools, and not enough to be called before the famous masters, Ming Yi!" ”

Of course, Zhang Taiyan did not forget to pursue Huang Zongxi's ulterior motives: "Zong Xi was originally the last of the party, boasting about the law, borrowing the name of SiQi, and plotting against the hero." He then fiercely attacked the worship of heroes, saying that heroes and ghosts and gods have the same name, and that they belong to the world, and whether they think that heroes are monarchs or the people, they are harmful to China: "Politics is exclusive to the lord, and the people see the master, then interpret the law and obey what is good; the political commissar is in the people, and the people are popular, then the officials go to the truth and repair their voices." In short, we cannot achieve the ideal of truly realizing the "rule of law."

This is not the place to discuss Zhang Taiyan's political ideals. What is interesting is that the political design of "Ming Yi to Be Visited" has gone from praise to denigration, but it is several years apart, how to explain it? The reasons for this are complex. But one thing is certain, that is, after he edited the "Minbao" directly participated in the leadership core of the League, he witnessed and heard, which made him more and more disappointed in the words and deeds of Sun Yat-sen and others, and his love of academic qualities that was rooted in concepts made him doubt the actual effect of the Western doctrine of the separation of powers and whether it could be copied to China. In the four years from "Heng SanLao" to "Non-Huang", he did not directly comment on Huang Zongxi, but his "Theory of the New Party" and "The Theory of Revolutionary Morality" and even "The Theory of Representative Deliberation and Denial" constantly reiterated his views on the supremacy of firm political conviction over actual political propositions, believing that it was impossible to achieve the desired goal by unscrupulous means, and whether the parliamentary politics formed by means of democracy and kitsch replaced the "emperor" that Chinese had long wanted to get rid of, we must also be deeply considered. Obviously, his views are not so much aimed at Kang Liang as they are criticisms of Sun Yat-sen. To paraphrase Montesquieu's theory of the separation of powers, he also wanted to preserve the qing Empire's system of civil officials selection and taiwan advice and refutation, and envisioned that in the future China should implement the constitutionalism of the separation of the "five powers" and contain each other, which is the Chinese-style republican system that Sun Yat-sen is brewing. There is no need to point out that after the Kuomintang became the autocrat of the Republic of China in 1927, the history of the "Five-Power Constitution" in vain proves that Zhang Taiyan's criticism is not unfounded, and even if we look at the logic alone, we cannot say that his controversy with Sun Yat-sen before the Xinhai Revolution was completely unreasonable.

Therefore, just as I once expressed my humble opinion in the article "Zhang Taiyan and Wang Yangming", thinking that he "discussed the king" and was really "discussing Kang", I thought that his affirmation to negation of Huang Zongxi's "Ming Yi to Be Visited" at the end of the Qing Dynasty actually showed that his political views on Sun Yat-sen moved from support to criticism, and "non-Yellow" means "non-Sun". As for his value judgment on Huang Zongxi's true historical status, it has become ambiguous. Political intervention in scholarship, regardless of the starting point, always ends with the prevailing view of non-historical views, which seems to be another example.

I am not an expert in the study of Huang Zongxi's doctrine. What I am concerned with is only the historical fate of Huang Zongxi's doctrine in the three hundred years since his death. This is an interesting topic in the history of Chinese thought and culture. I hope that the above statement will contribute to the in-depth study of this topic.

This article was originally published in the Journal of Tianjin Trade Union Management Cadre College (No. 4, 2001), and the annotations are omitted.